Dr. H.W. (Rico) Sneller (1967) is assistant professor of philosophical anthropology at the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University. He studied theology in Utrecht and Leiden and philosophy in Paris. His dissertation dealt with the problem of negative theology and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida.

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Dr. H.W. (Rico) Sneller (1967) is assistant professor of philosophical anthropology at the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University. He studied theology in Utrecht and Leiden and philosophy in Paris. His dissertation dealt with the problem of negative theology and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida.

Research

The Other side of Rationality.

Rationality is widely acclaimed to be the victory of Western civilization over mythology, superstition, religion, if not over the ‘under-developed’ world as a whole. However, this victory has also been liable to severe critique. The so-called ‘dialectics’ of the Enlightenment – its reductive, distortive, or even destructive reverse side – has been at the very heart of philosophical thinking after Hegel. My research centers on two general questions: 1) from which inner tensions do prevailing conceptions of ‘rationality’ themselves suffer? 2) how can rationality be adequately re-contextualised, and how can justice be done to other meaningful states of consciousness such as ‘the unconscious’, ‘instinct’, ‘spirituality’, ‘exceptional experiences’ etc.? I am particularly interested in philosophy of life (Schopenhauer, Klages, Bergson, Buber, Driesch, Dilthey a.o.) and in psychoanalysis, and I am exploring the philosophical viability of these strands of thought for a more adequate contemporary appreciation of human being in light of the global urgencies of our time. Among these urgencies I count e.g. questions of life and death, war and peace, impoverishment of experience, moral nihilism, etc.

CV

Rico Sneller regularly holds lectures and teaches frequently in permanent education and schooling initiatives (honours classes, LappTop, Liberal Arts Academy). He is a board member of the European Societas Ethica, a society for academic research in ethics which organises annual conference throughout Europe. Together with Dr Mahmoud Masaeli (Ottawa) and Prof. Dr Jalil Roshandel (Seattle) he is the founder of a global initiative called Alternative Approaches and Global Issues (APGC); together they have organised several international conferences (in Ottawa, Washington, Leiden, North Carolina, Bogota). As the Vice Executive Director he is responsible for strategic planning and policy making for the Network as a whole. With four colleagues, prof. dr em. Hans Gerding (UL), dr Gerard Visser (UL), dr. Angela Roothaan (VU) and drs Barbara Zwaan, he organises several conferences a year on philosophy and spirituality. Another common initiative is a book, co-authored with prof. Hans Gerding and Dr Hein van Dongen, on philosophers’ approaches of exceptional human experiences, Wild Beasts of the Philosophical Desert (Cambridge Publishing 2014). He is board member of the Journal for Religion and Violence, Logos. Revista de la Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades (La Salle university, Bogota) and Filosofie. He is also a member of the Cohen Gesellschaft and the International Rosenzweig Society.

Sneller H.W. (2012), ‘“Resistance against Disappearance”/”Widerstand gegen das Verschwinden”. The Meaning of the Universalist Philosophy of Hermann Cohen for the Experience of Tolerance in the Cosmopolitical Arena of the Eastern Mediterranean’. Thessaloniki / Aristotle University. [other]other